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Learning type : portrait of a family
In this section, we go a step ahead in our exploration of Typography, and see things from a larger point of view : after having studied the letters as individual shapes (in Anatomy of a letterform), we now review what makes a complete typeface, and how typefaces can form a family.
WHAT'S IN A TYPEFACE:
First, some name-dropping: aTypeface is a complete set of characters drawn in the same way, with the same weight and gathered under a single name. Helvetica Demi and Helvetica bold are two distinct typefaces, belonging to the same family. Some people also call it a face. Originally, a 'type-face' was the raised surface of a metal character that, pressed to the paper, printed the letter on it.
And there are up to 5 differents sets of letters in a typeface.
1. The standard characters.
In countries using roman alphabets, the standard set includes (large) capitals, lowercases, (regular) numbers, accentuated capitals and lowercases, punctuation signs, and a various amount of signs, among which are the monetary symbols, and the mathematical symbols. A decent commercial font must have these.
(The complete list of characters with Unicode numbers and names
(in every languages!) is avaliable at
Unicode's Homepage.).
2. Small capitals and old style figures.
This set features normal capitals, but lowercases are replaced with small capitals.
These are definitely not reduced versions of capitals, sorry you lazy typographers! The small capitals are a redrawn version of the capitals at a smaller size. Even if their strokes or stems are slightly thiner than the capitals, they remains homogenous, and are not a whole mathematical reduction. (Most graphic softwares are proposing a Small caps options that just do such an unpleasant mathematical reduction. So, just like the Bold options, the use of it is strongly not recommended, either for legibility than integrity).
Most Small capitals typefaces doesn't have italics. They mostly have accentued characters.
The old style figures are numbers that does not sits as usual on the baseline, but are placed like they used to be during the previous centuries. They are called Elzevir numbers.
3. Experts.
The expert sets are gathering various more unusual letters and signs : Small capitals, complete set of ligatures, punctuation signs, fractions, and few other ones.
4. Alternates.
Also named Swash capitals, this set includes some alternative letters, scarcely used: special ligatures, special versions of letters for ending texts, special ornamented capitals, etc...
5. Titling Capitals.
Also named Display set, this one includes versions of the letters specially drawn for being used at very large point sizes (posters, sign boards, etc...), and being decipherable from very far. They do not features lowercases.
WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD A FAMILY?
Well, much patience, we all know that! To enriches a text lay-out, and to help designers to creates various levels of legibility or to insists on certain parts of a copy, most typefaces have several variants, with 5 main categories:
1. Roman vs Italics (or slanted):
By opposition to a roman typeface, which is vertically constructed, an italic is a version constructed around a slanted axis. It was invented by a venitian named Tebaldo Manuzio, in 1501, in order to emulate the handwriting.
The average angle of the italic is between 7 and 20 degrees. It is far more cursive than the roman and gives sentences a definite feel of movement. It also infers a certain 'intimacy' to it. That's why it is often used to type quotations.
The Typographic Code also allows its use for titles of books, plays, magazines or artworks, names of boats, cars, latin or foreign quotations, etc...
Its legibility being a bit less good than Roman, it isn't recommended to use it for long sentences : it is mostly used to emphasis a single word amidst a text, or short texts.
An Italic is not to be confused with a slanted typeface (also called an Oblique).
The later ones are just slanted versions of the roman. They appeared with the arising of very mathematicaly drawn typefaces, in the beginning of the 20th century. Such typefaces were intentionally very regular ones and having Italics (=script) would have be quite illogical: they were crying out their mechanical (non-human, industrial) soul. So those faces had obliques, i.e. slanted version instead. Creating a variant using such a mechanical and regular process was conceptually elegant.
But only for such industrial typographies!
But nowadays, almost one century later, softwares are proposing to slant mathematically (generally 12 degrees) any typefaces to obtain the corresponding Italic (the icon of this function is mostly a misleading I). This explain the current confusion between Italics and Obliques, and the multiplication of ugly slanted faces now and there. The difference is obvious:
Doing this is wrong, awfully wrong, not only because a slanted Times-roman is ugly, but also because it will probably won't print right! It appears okay onscreen, on your laser printer, but won't do on the Rip.
And, to concludes with this, it is even more stupid to slant faces as the Oblique faces are themselves carefully redrawn, to respect the axis of the face, and the particular way thicker and thiner part are distributed around it.
(technical note: to add more confusion to that, if you 'slant' a True Type that contains the corresponding Italic, the computer will subtitute it, instead of slanting the font. But you won't know it, appart for looking closely to it. So be very carefull with this : our advice is 'don't slant, man'!
2. Weight matters.
The other variant domain avaliable is the one of the weight of typefaces, that allows the designers to creates contrasts in a copy, or to emphasis certain words or sentences.
A Typeface family articulates around the Roman (also named regular, Plain or Normal), and there are thiner and thicker variants (each one of these having its own Italic or Oblique). Below are the main variants and their names:
(Note that the variations of weight are very progressive. And the aliasing of on-screen rendering is not doing them enough justice...)
Each weight variant is carefully redrawn. As a matter of fact, as most typefaces does not have a regular thickness on each part of the letters, a bolder variant must have the same thickness variation.
Added to that, a face gets generally more thicker horizontally than vertically (to preserve the size of the letter as uniform as possible from one weight to another).
That's why the Bold function of softwares is, just like the Italic one, a very wrong one : It makes the face regularily thicker, and so often creates ugly tranformation in the shapes of letters.
Besides it also won't print right, most of the time.
3. Lebehnraum?
Another variant concerns the width of letters. Originally intended to allows bigger point-sizes within a determined width or height (the ones of magazine or newspapers covers), the condensed and extended variants are creating another domain of exploration. Those variants are: Ultracondensed, Extracondensed, condensed, Plain, extended, wide. But most faces had few ones, mostly an extended and a condensed variant.
There are also variant named Compressed and Narrow, which are more condensed than the condensed, and often features big thickness differences between vertical and horizontal strokes.
4. Rounded
Rounded is another variant, less common, that deals withedges of letters, that are rounded.
5. On-demand variations ?
With the advent of Multimaster font technology, it is possible for users to creates on-demand variations in-between the classical weights or width. The Typographer creates masters, for example a Extra bold and a Thin, and sets how they transforms from one to another.
The user then can use the Multimaster font and ask for a 80% or a 13% bold version, etc...
This technology also allows to sets others variation paths, like, for example from a thrash version to a normal one. So the users can use a 63%bold+75%trash variant.
A very interesting technology, that unfortunately implies a huge amount of work from the author of the face, and also requires regular transformation, that can apply to all letters within a font. So it did not encountered a great success for the moment...
Nowaday, a new breed of font families have arised. They often have lots of weights, but also a lot of variations, including some with serif and some whithout.
So one can imagine that in the future, Font files will be some kind of small softs, and includes a general shape that will be modifiable alongside some author-specified 'trends', with or whithout serifs, from Ultra-light to Black, Ultra rounded to squared, etc...
As a conclusion, without even taking account of the possible new technologies, creating a typeface family is a hard and long work, that often implies years in the making.
But with all those variants, a graphic designer feels like a musician in front of a Grand Piano, with infinite possibilities to creates emotions.
And as for music, a good advice is often to try to stay simple, and not to use too much variants at the same time!
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